I will try to lift a big misunderstanding about what exactly is health tourism from the European and Greek perspective.
In the upper part of the slide we can see the concept and in the lower part the establishments that are created to address the issue, to produce services for different target groups.
In Europe, Health tourism is divided in two parts medical and wellness tourism. In our country Health tourism consist of three pillars, medical, thermal and wellness. So, we have many different types of establishments using one way or another thermal natural resources. Sometime the concept fully depends on thermal natural resources and sometimes the usage is very small. In order for you to understand how the medical establishments are using the thermal water you can bring to your mind our rehabilitation centers. Do they use thermal water? The answer is no. Do they have excellent services? The answer is yes. And how do they manage it without thermal water. The answer is that in medical services the need for thermal water is limited. But in the other side of the spectrum going to holism and wellness the need for thermal services is growing.
In the next slide we can have two very important pieces of information. First the competition. In Europe right now exist 12.000 establishments that are using thermal natural resources. So, if we want to bring visitors from abroad, we need to know that the level of competition is high. And the second the primary motive for using thermal waters is only 11%. This means that only 1 to 10 visitors going to buy thermal services in the thermal establishments because all they want is that. But 9 to 10 are going there for some other reasons, visit of the region, city break, business, gastronomy, climbing…. And use thermal waters as a complimentary service.
Before we enter dipper in the Greek thermal tourism, we need to see the environment that this kind of tourism is developing. So, in Greece the concept is the 3s, sea, sun, sand. It had produced a lot of wealth from this concept and every year it happens exactly the same. The economy of our country depends on that. The figures are astonishing. 25% of GDP comes from tourism and 21% of the labor force of the country is employed in tourism. We have 10.000 hotels.
So now let’ s see the thermal reality in Greece.
Thermal tourism has a long history in Greece. I used to say to my European thermal colleagues that southern Aegean sea is the birth place of thermal tourism with Hippocrates and his prescriptions to his patients travelling to find cures. The quality of our thermal natural resources is excellent and when it comes to numbers, we have 85 officially recognized thermal natural resources that comes from the 750 natural vents. Be careful please thermal water can be used in energy or in agricultural sector and not only in tourism.
We have 32 thermal establishments named Thermal Treatment units, which is something small and Thermal establishments for Tourism and Thermalism which is something bigger.
In these 32 thermal establishments we had 1 million visitors last year. Certainly, the number is much smaller from our best year in 2010 in which we had 2,5 million visitors. This reduction is the result of the end of the state’s subsidy system that we used to work for decades, and after that happens, we had to change things in order to develop and find growth again. So, in recent years we had worked hard on legislation, in the education of the employees, in modern management of the thermal establishments, in new ways that thermal services can communicate to public and be sold.
As far as it concerns marketing we found through research that the best way of selling thermal services is in the form of destination. There is a close operational connection of all the touristic products of the destination and for that reason it is much easier for the visitor to build his touristic experience and approach the different services.
In order to change the concept from curing the old and sick to prevention and wellbeing and to create new authentic experiences for the visitors we needed time, money and commitment to our strategy.
And after this long way it comes the era of investments in the thermal infrastructures. As you can see dozens of millions are invested right now in the thermal infrastructures. In Kythnos, Kammena vourla, ipiros, kavala, chios and additionally we have the 15 millions of Recovery and Resilience Facility.
As you understand we have reasons to believe that in 2026 the all sector will have changed and new modern thermal services will supplement the Greek touristic product. The story of the recovery of the thermal sector in Greece it will be a success story.
